Heat, Magic Idle As NBA Cancels First Two Weeks Of Season

Bad news for Miami Heat and Orlando Magic fans: The NBA has cancelled the first two weeks of the 2011-2012 season.

In the league's showdown with the players over the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), this is the first real evidence showing how far both sides will go in continuing negotiations and positional posturing.

“We certainly hoped it would never come to this,” NBA President David Stern said. “I think that both sides worked hard to get to a better solution. We think that we made very fair proposals. I'm sure the players think the same thing. But the gap is so significant that we just can't bridge it at this time.”

The league cancelling anything is a signal that they are willing to go pretty far to fight for what they see as a fatal flaw in their business model: high salaries are bankrupting teams. They certainly haven't proven it to the fans, who might to really want to hear a woe-is-me-story from Daddy Warbucks right about now.

Today on ESPN, New York Knicks forward Amar'e Stoudemire floated the idea of players forming their own league, telling ESPN that players will give “serious” consideration to starting their own league.

According to Stoudemire, the possibility of forming an alternate league has already been discussed among players, who've said they'll give “serious” consideration to starting their own league.

“We can't just sit around and not do anything. So we have to figure out ways to now continue to play basketball at a high level against top competition and have fun doing it,” Stoudemire said Tuesday night at a Manhattan Footlocker to promote his new sneaker, the Nike Air Max Sweep Thru, as reported by by ESPN.

Start your own league, are you serious? Goodbye Boston Celtics, hello New England Adidas.

They won't start their own league, they would all have to take a pay cut, a serious pay cut. Fans will still tune into watch five construction workers dressed as Los Angeles Lakers before they tune into the LeBron Super B-Ball League featuring the Richmond Rimshakers versus the Bama Jam Jams.

In some areas of the country, the teams are bigger than the players, especially the ones with big wallets.

Of course the players want a larger piece, that's business. And they have the right – and the business duty – to fight for as much as they can get. The players' Achilles heal is their individual endorsement contracts. The longer a lock-out lasts, the less desirable an NBA spokesman becomes.

And for those taking sides, you should be ashamed. You do not have the data, the player experience or the real-world mega-dollars to be enough in-the-know about what's going on to render your decision. You are arm-chairing it at best.

Some of the teams paid too much money for players and this is a course correction. Nothing more, nothing less. Should you really blame the players, who are getting what they can in a what is literally a player's market, a basic principle of smart business.

Sure, a few players got paid more than they should, but this is the checks and balances process of a free market playing out before our very eyes.

It might not be as exciting as watching actual basketball, but the virtual version has its share of drama (and even a little dribbling courtesy of NBA President David Stern).

THIS IS A BIG DEAL. For fans, their favorite athletes are sitting at home playing PS3 when they should be slamming monster dunks and dishing no-look passes to the open man.

The fans just want to watch some amazing basketball. The players want to get their sport on. And the owners – well, they are the money guys, the ugly side of sports. Sports are about allegiances, talent and merchandise. That's two out of three categories that favor the players.